Archive

Quotes

Treaties, you see, are like girls and roses: they last while they last.

—Charles de Gaulle, 1963

The vice presidency isn’t worth a pitcher of warm piss.

—John Nance Garner, c. 1967

The U.S. presidency is a Tudor monarchy plus telephones.

—Anthony Burgess, 1972

In politics, what begins in fear usually ends in folly.

—Samuel Taylor Coleridge, 1830

It is a certain sign of a wise government and proceeding, when it can hold men’s hearts by hopes, when it cannot by satisfaction.

—Francis Bacon, 1625

The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.

—H.L. Mencken, 1921

There is no method by which men can be both free and equal.

—Walter Bagehot, 1863

Written laws are like spiderwebs: they will catch, it is true, the weak and poor but would be torn in pieces by the rich and powerful.

—Anacharsis, c. 550 BC

The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants. It is its natural manure.

—Thomas Jefferson, 1787

Politics is the art of the possible.

—Otto von Bismarck, 1867

There is nothing more tyrannical than a strong popular feeling among a democratic people.

—Anthony Trollope, 1862

Every communist must grasp the truth: “Political power grows out of the barrel of a gun.”

—Mao Zedong, 1938

Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.

—Lord Acton, 1887